NOTES OF 1/2/02 LAPTOP SUPPORT GROUP MEETING George Markowsky As before, I am circulating notes based on the 1/2/02 meeting of the Laptop Support Group (LSG). This is not a set of minutes, but rather a summary of important announcements and decisions. We will be meeting again at 10:30 AM in Room 115 DPC on Monday 1/21/02. We were joined by Deirdre Mageean and Kathryn Hunt from the Margaret Chase Smith Center for Public Policy, who would like to support our conference and other efforts. Seymour outlined some key principles to follow for both the workshop in February and the Conference in May. The key thrust is described in his OpEd piece in the Bangor Daily News: the people of Maine must take ownership of this initiative. It should become the people's project. The May Conference Goals are: 1. Give teachers in the state the view that they are part of something big and important on a world scale. Maine should take a leadership role in the development of educational technology. Importance conveyed by importance of speakers. We should make sure that the world is watching it -- get the press and opinion makers to attend this meeting. Want to have commissioners from various states to come. 2. Teachers should get useful guidance on how to think about what they will be doing in the classroom. We need to figure out what will serve teachers the best. 3. Establish Maine as an important site for the development of new ideas and technology. Gary Stager was keynote speaker at the National Schoolboard Meeting (correct name?), he was mobbed by people who wanted to know about what is happening in Maine. We should get an observer from US Dept of Education -- we need international people as well. Some items that have not been on the agenda. Examples of how we can extend the base of supports. Change the motto on license plates -- The Learning State. We need to prepare the state for the fact that there will be problems. Enrico Co. VA had many bad things, which fortunately hit the press 3 months after our proposal was passed: porno, broken computers, kids playing games. We need to reduce the likelihood of these bad things happening. We need to engage in public education about this. Seymour's OpEd piece was a contribution to public education, and he will moderate a weekly column for the BDN. Eva wanted to know where the home of the support group should be. Seymour felt that a group should be started at UM and that ideally there should be several centers. What name should we use for this project. Current name is Maine Learns! I suggested the Paperettes. Need to put together website. http://www.laptops.maine.edu We need to develop a layered structure for responding to laptop related problems. A first step would be to have student technology leaders. Seymour believes that 90% of the problems will be of the standard sort that schools deal with. Between now and Spring put out the word to all 243 middle schools asking the coordinators to find kids who are knowledgeable and enthusiastic. Identify 2-4 from each school, and over the summer organize computer camps for these kids 1000-1500 kids total. Staffing it and designing we should get on it right now. SIGs should be organized. Perhaps a group of historians of the state. It was suggested that people look at mainememory.net, to see how this might be done. Seymour also spoke in terms of a Buddy System staffed by volunteers. Larry Latour outlined the steps that needed to be taken to get to the May Conference. 1. Several days of working on materials. 2. Workshop for a special group of teachers. 3. We use the time between the workshop and conference to develop materials further. 4. The Conference itself. 5. The post-conference follow up. Larry then gave a demo of how to teach system thinking. This required 4 people not seeing each other trying to reach an announced number by holding up fingers. There were several variations that he illustrated. Gail outlined here video workshop: 1. Discussed techniques of movie making 2. Went through iMovie tutorial 3. Divided into groups so group members can help each other. 4. Pick a topic that they could film during their time at the workshop. Mike and Raphael believe that they should be assigned a topic related to programming or other topic. 5. Time to spend making movies 6. View and critique movies. The issue came up whether you focus on the movie making for 2 solid days and programming for 2 solid days, or whether you do some of each each day. The consensus seemed to be for the 2 solid days on each. It was felt strongly that we needed to have a small brochure describing the workshop available for a 1/17 meeting with teachers being organized by Betty Manchester. Gail sent some material for inclusion in this brochure which is reproduced below. Larry will prepare some material with Seymour. Tom Bickford will put the brochure together. There was some discussion on having interaction between the programming and video groups, but nothing definitive was established. It was suggested that teachers receive a list of possible topics for video making before they came to the workshop. It was also suggested that the Programming section include material on project management and types of models. A publication from MIT was suggested as a good source of information on models. Steve Philbrick will supply a more details reference. ************************************************** Gail's Material on Video Component of Workshop VIDEOMAKING: Educators in this exciting two-day workshop will plan a production, storyboard ideas, take videos with a digital camcorder, import them to a computer and learn to edit them with iMovie. These skills will be situated within an educational context. Teachers will learn: * iMovie and related skills * project management suggestions * theory behind active learning and constructivism * how to assess student made projects Teachers will be introduced to * Examples of student-made videos * Ideas for classroom projects aligned with the Maine Learning Results * Resources for further video experimentation